


Relatively Impossible

by a_sky_full_of_roses



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 06:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4776803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sky_full_of_roses/pseuds/a_sky_full_of_roses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble / musings on the events leading up to "Forever."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relatively Impossible

Alice: How long is forever?  
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.  
              - Lewis Carroll, "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland"

 

It was impossible from the start. The Doctor knew that.

But there’s a desperate mother with lavender skin and heightened touch telepathy, a promise on Rose’s lips and then on his, too. They’ll save the day, of course they will. Don’t they always?  
But they don’t, not this time. They’re too late, they crossed the point of no return without even realizing it. If he’d been more careful, calculated for a few more minutes (2.78 to be precise), perhaps the universe would’ve let him win this one. He’d crack the fabric of time if he went back for the boy now. Almost does it anyway, just so that he won’t have to feel the crippling loss of a mother who takes his hand in her grief to try to fill the void in her mind.

The universe always wins in the end. Nearly a millennium

[time, it always comes back to time]

of life and he’s still learning that simple fact.

He thinks he can still feel her consciousness as he pilots the TARDIS away, or maybe it’s just his own memories of loss, creeping up to gnaw away at his senses.

[his heart.]

~~~~~~~

He’s got his hands safely stowed away in his pockets; he’s untouchable. Unreadable.

[not to her, never to her]

He hears the doors of the TARDIS creak open (he should really fix that) and Rose step out behind him. Her own hands are restless, pulling at the edge of the jacket she’d gone back to retrieve, but she remains quiet. Sometimes there are no words that serve to consol. He breaks the silence anyway; this body is so full of words, synonyms and paronyms and heteronyms and whatever other nyms he needs to feel in control.

“Did you know, Rose, that there are cultures that don’t have a system for measuring time? Of course, time is relative anyway. Only makes sense if you want it to, if it’s so ingrained in you that you needn’t have a clock or a calendar to say that it’s an evening in December. Humans, you lot, you’re the bloody experts of measuring time. Nanoseconds and days and months and centuries pass and you’ve got it all written down so that you’ll always know how much is gone and how much you’ve got left. Ridiculous, really, how –“

He cuts himself off, his filters finally kicking in to prevent him from going on a tirade against humankind. He forces his gaze to remain fixed on the horizon, jagged rock formations reaching up into an orange sky.

[untouchable]

Rose’s eyes bore into him, but he can’t look at her, he knows, he knows, he’s being a hypocrite. But he can’t help himself, can’t help that he feels the timelines swirling around them, hurtling towards a point that he can’t quite see but the noise it creates at the back of his skull is becoming unbearable.

“And you, Doctor? What would you be without time?”

And there it is, the question that’s haunted him since he felt the life drain from a lavender-skinned boy cradled in his arms, from an entire planet under another orange sky.

Somehow, the words falling from her lips sound more like a mercy than a curse.

[swirling, swirling]

“How long are you gonna stay with me?”

“Forever.”

She tugs his hand from his pocket, fitting her fingers between his.

It’s impossible from the start.

[time is relative anyway, isn’t it?]


End file.
